Autonomous Team Formation and Task Negotiation Among Unmanned Vehicles

Abstract

A system of autonomous vehicles for forming a team of autonomous vehicles to perform a designated set of tasks. Each vehicle stores data representing its own capabilities that match the tasks, data representing needed capabilities for the team to perform the tasks, and data representing the capabilities of all current team members. Each of the vehicles is equipped with a communications system operable to send and receive join request messages and join response messages. All join request message contain the capabilities of the sending vehicle. All join response messages contain current team capabilities data. Upon receipt of a join request message, a vehicle compares needed capabilities data to the received capabilities data, and if there are matched capabilities, it updates the team capabilities data and transmits a join response message. Upon receipt of a join response message, if the message indicates the sending vehicle has joined the team, the receiving vehicle updates the team capabilities list.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]This invention relates to autonomous unmanned vehicles, and more specifically to such vehicles that cooperate to form teams and negotiate performance of tasks.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Unmanned vehicles are increasingly also “autonomous”, meaning that the unmanned vehicle has an on-board control system that allows it to perform its mission independently of a human operator. Individual vehicle autonomy is advancing rapidly with regard to capabilities in perception, localization, and navigation.[0003]As unmanned vehicles have improved in their capabilities, so have the variety and complexity of the tasks for which they may be used. However, there are many situations in which a single vehicle cannot meet all the requirements to accomplish a goal.[0004]One approach to accomplishing more complex goals is to use teams of vehicles, among which tasks required to accomplish the goal are distributed. For example, the vehicles may divide tasks among...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is about a system of autonomous vehicles that work together to achieve a specific goal. These vehicles are able to communicate with each other and negotiate tasks based on their capabilities. The system does not require a human operator to control the vehicles and can adjust to changing conditions. The technical effect of this invention is to create a more complex and efficient team of autonomous vehicles that can work together to achieve a goal without being limited by the capabilities of individual vehicles.

Problems solved by technology

However, there are many situations in which a single vehicle cannot meet all the requirements to accomplish a goal.

Conventional systems do not tend to easily integrate additional vehicles of the same or other types, to effectively use vehicles with varying levels of capability to perform a task, or adjust to changing conditions such as the loss of a vehicle.

This limits the area of operation to the communications range of the human operator's station, introduces additional latency due to human reaction time, and creates a single point of failure.

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